


Sleepless Nights

by lillianmmalter



Series: Sleepless Nights [1]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Canon Disabled Character, Child Death, Depression, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pregnancy, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-19 13:37:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7363414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillianmmalter/pseuds/lillianmmalter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Daniel becomes a published author and his and Peggy's children grow up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepless Nights

**Author's Note:**

> Unending thanks to my beta, Ellix, who only grumbled a little at my continually pestering her with brainstorming and flow questions when she had more important things to focus on.
> 
> Thanks also to truth-renowned for being the fandom's best cheerleader (seriously, you're amazing) and to peg-carter for posting her fantastic list of birthdays I decided to steal for the kids. It was nice to have one less thing to worry about and keep track of.
> 
> If you're curious, [this](http://www.antiquehomestyle.com/plans/standard/1923/23standard-collingwood.htm) is Daniel and Peggy's house. I imagined the kitchen and bathrooms being a bit bigger (seriously, what was with this designer and giant hallways?) and the windows in their offices to be placed differently, but this is basically their house as it exists in this fic.
> 
> Alas, I don't own Agent Carter.

**August 1974**

**“Blackout” Turns 20, Author D.S. Carver’s Identity Still a Mystery**

_This year marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of D.S. Carver’s “Blackout”, the first in the acclaimed Anna Andrews spy series. “Blackout” was unprecedentedly feminist when it was first published in 1954, an era when women were largely expected to be homemakers, not elite spies or crime fighters, and the series has continued to challenge expectations ever since._

_Carver expertly mixes elements of science fiction with tales of spycraft, heartbreak, and romance, to tell the story of a young woman doing her best to defend her country from those who threaten it. Anna Andrews kicks butt and takes names, giving the more famous 007 a run for his money as she takes down communist spies, mafia kingpins, murderous starlets, and corrupt businessmen, just to name a few of her foes._

_In “Blackout”, Andrews is introduced as a bored secretary in an unnamed United States spy agency, eager to prove herself and honor the work of her older brother, who died under enigmatic circumstances during WWII. Instead, she is stuck filing reports and fetching coffee._

_Then a familiar face from her past emerges in the form of an old family friend, the handsome ladies’ man, James Volk. Volk gives her a secret mission outside the bounds of her agency: help him find and destroy the dangerous Blitzkrieg Button before it falls into the wrong hands. The duo instantly slip into a sibling-like partnership full of droll banter and unwavering loyalty, which serves them well in evading the notice of Andrews’s colleague and eventual love interest, Paul Williams, who has been assigned to investigate the creation of the very weapon Andrews and Volk seek to destroy._

_“Blackout” also features the introduction of Andrews’s chief nemesis, Vanessa Carlisle, a society belle turned communist spy. Carlisle, whose intense mutual obsession with Andrews has some literary theorists arguing that the character is a lesbian and that Andrews herself is not entirely straight, spends most of “Blackout” pretending to be Andrews’s friend and benefactress before double-crossing her in an attempt gain control of the Blitzkrieg Button for her own nefarious purposes._

_Much speculation has been made over the years as to the identity of the mysterious D.S. Carver, who has never done a book signing, interview, or indeed revealed anything about himself – or herself, as many debate that Carver must be a woman to write women so well. Others are adamant that Carver must have worked as a spy, like his British counterpart, Ian Fleming, during WWII, and perhaps afterward. The Anna Andrews series consistently reveals an insider knowledge of both the inner workings of the WWII European battlefront and postwar Washington politics._

_In fact, it has been contended that because Carver’s eighth book, “Midnight Massacre” opened with a scene eerily similar to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Carver must have had advanced knowledge of it. “Midnight Massacre” was published a full three months before the incident occurred however, and three years before former naval officer, John White accused President Johnson, Secretary McNamara, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of providing false information on the incident to Congress, thereby escalating the conflict in Vietnam. Nevertheless, conspiracy theories about both Carver and Andrews abound..._

 

**July 1951**

Daniel stared at the ceiling, watching the night shadows of their neighborhood play across the plaster in both comforting and disturbing patterns. Peggy snored inelegantly beside him, the buzzing fan they purchased after moving in pointed right at her in an attempt to ward off some of the summer heat while she slept.

He envied her her ability to sleep so soundly, even as he’d never do anything to purposefully wake her from it. She was seven months into her second pregnancy and deeply uncomfortable with it. She’d been more tired than normal the past few months as well, which Stark had joked meant she must be spending all her energy on growing a monster of a baby.

The visual of his black eye still made Daniel smile. It didn’t do anything to put him to sleep, though.

It had been three days since Daniel got anything more than what amounted to a brief nap, and even longer since he slept through an entire night. He missed sleeping.

His nightmares were back. The old ones from the war and just after had started combining with the ones he had about losing everyone he loved to Zero Matter. Dottie Underwood had even started to feature in them as a much more cartoonish villain than he knew her to be in reality. They were disturbing and weird and many of them stuck with him for days no matter what he tried to do to forget them.

He’d take the nightmares though if it meant he could finally get some sleep.

At 4 am he gave it up as a bad job and eased himself out of bed, careful not to disturb Peggy. He grabbed for the pair of crutches he kept at home for when he didn’t want to bother with his prosthetic and walked out of the room.

Daniel stopped at Jackie’s door and looked in. The toddler was splayed out in his crib with a looseness even his namesake would envy, his pajama top bunched around his waist and his dark hair a messy fluff on top of his head.

Almost two years old and Daniel still had trouble believing he was his.

When Peggy told him she was pregnant the first time, Daniel had to have her repeat it twice, the sudden buzzing in his ears making it difficult for him to think, let alone react in any way other than slack jawed staring.

Eventually he collected enough of his wits to be ecstatic, but Peggy still wouldn’t let him forget it. When announcing her current pregnancy she’d warned him to keep his mouth shut before sharing the news. He’d had a much more satisfactory reaction that time, if Peggy’s moans were any indication.

Jackie smacked his lips in his sleep and Daniel smiled. Peggy did the same thing sometimes.

He loved those two so much sometimes he felt it like a physical pain. He worried about them both, continually thought up new ways to keep them safe and happy and healthy. Peggy was admittedly the more difficult person to protect, being who she was in the career she chose, but he was almost used to the special kind of worry he had for her.

Jackie, though, he was new, constantly learning and doing new things that were thrilling and mind-expanding. He could walk now, which meant the amount of trouble he could get himself into was exponentially more dangerous than rolling off the couch (Peggy) or choking on a too big bite of carrot (Daniel) or being forgotten in a canvas shopping bag (an absolutely terrified Jarvis).

Sometimes it was all Daniel could do just to watch him for awhile and make sure he was still breathing.

It was a small thing, maybe even a stupid thing, but it helped.

Once he was assured his son was alive and well, Daniel carefully maneuvered himself down the stairs and into his office.

Part of the reason he and Peggy bought their house when they moved back east was because it had space for each of them to have an office at home. Peggy, with the more demanding and high-powered job, got the large, expensive-looking library, where she intimidated people in the rare cases her government contacts and colleagues visited her at home.

Next to the library, in what used to be the connecting conservatory, Daniel had his own office. After a bit of work to replace the wall of windows with drywall and plaster and four square hopper windows placed high on the outside wall for better security, Daniel’s office was similar to what he had as chief in LA, even down to the hook for his crutch by the door. It helped ease the sting of losing that position when he left the SSR for the CIA, something he would never tell Peggy, but which he suspected she knew anyway.

Unfortunately, Daniel hadn’t been getting much work done lately, either at home or at the office. He could hardly focus on anything. He knew his work was starting to suffer, though either no one at the office had noticed yet or they were simply not mentioning it to him. He wasn’t sure which option he dreaded more.

Thoughts swirled through his head. Anxieties over past cases long wrapped-up flooded over him even as worries about new patterns he saw emerging in his work as an analyst loomed in the future.

And there were the kids. The second one wasn’t even born yet and he still wondered what would happen to them if he and Peggy died. The fact that they both updated their wills on an annual basis made no difference to his anxiety-riddled mind.

Daniel dragged a hand through his hair and sighed. He had to stop thinking like this. It was starting to get as bad as those first weeks after the doctors took his leg, and he definitely had no desire to revisit that state of mind ever again. He had strategies now to keep that level of hell at bay.

A nurse called Malone had suggested he try keeping a journal about a month after he got hit, and it had definitely helped him sort through his thoughts and fears while he was stuck in a hospital bed for a small eternity. He’d stopped doing it once he joined the SSR, though, certain that having potentially classified information scrawled in personal notebooks at home would be frowned on by the top brass.

Maybe if he kept his journaling to what happened in his dreams, any information that came out would be ascribed to the weirdness of the sleeping mind instead of things that actually happened. Something had to change, after all. He couldn’t keep thinking like this or he’d snap.

He set up his typewriter and started writing, reporting on his most recent dreams the way he wrote out reports for his job. Peggy, the war, an empty baby carriage, Jarvis and Ana and a flamingo with Whitney Frost’s voice. Peggy falling from a height only to be shot in the chest by her dead brother and bleed out like Thompson.

No. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t helping. He could actually feel his blood pressure rise as he typed.

Writing his nightmares down as he had them, with him and Peggy and their friends in starring roles in the thick of danger wasn’t helping him move past his anxiety about them. He needed more distance from it, he needed…

He needed it to be happening to someone who wasn’t real.

The thought knocked him back in his chair. He remembered all those detective novels he devoured as a snot-nosed kid avoiding his noisy family in favor of murky underworld dealings and the thrill of making the unknown known.

Could he do that? Should he do that? Should he remake his brain’s twisted remembrances of real events into a story to be consumed and then tossed aside?

No one would have to read it. It would be like writing a letter he never intended to send.

Before he could help himself he started thinking about characters, settings, situations. His typewriter was quickly pushed aside in favor of a pad of paper as he worked through what to keep in and what to ignore, building up a structured plot outline and sketching out just how his characters would relate to each other and their real-life counterparts. He completely lost himself in the world he was creating.

Some time later, a soft creak sounded at the door leading into Peggy’s office and he jerked in his chair. Peggy stood in the doorway, illuminated in the light from his desk lamp looking like an angel of domesticity in her nightgown. He blinked and his eyelids were lined with sandpaper.

“Daniel, darling, what are you doing up already?” she asked.

Daniel blinked again and tried to bring himself back into his life.

“Just trying to get some things out of my head,” he said, his voice coming out rougher than he expected.

She padded over to his side, glancing at the neat piles of paper that now covered his desk. “Were you not able to sleep again?” she asked.

Daniel shook his head blearily and leaned into the round curve of her stomach as she pet his hair. The first rays of sunrise shot through the windows and Daniel gave up any hope of sleep for at least another fifteen hours. The thought was almost enough to make him weep. What the hell was wrong with him wasting precious sleeping hours on nonsense?

“When was the last time you slept?”

Daniel’s mind struggled to recall anything that wasn’t the story. He knew he caught several hours of what could almost be considered a decent night’s sleep at some point the week before.

“Thursday?”

“Last week?” Peggy asked, the chiding tone she usually reserved for Jackie or her subordinates at work tinging her voice.

“Unless you think napping counts.”

“I don’t. Have you really not slept in that long?”

“It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose, Peg. I can’t get my brain to shut up.”

She smoothed her fingers through his hair and it was almost enough to make him beg. For what, he wasn’t certain, but it was Peggy, so he’d trust her to figure it out.

“Are the nightmares back?”

“Mm. And work and about ten thousand other things that don’t seem to matter so much right now. Not that it’s stopping me thinking about them in a loop.”

“That’s it, you’re staying home today, Director’s orders.”

“You’re not my director.”

“No, but I have enough clout with Beetle that he won’t dare reprimand you for it.”

Daniel snorted softly and leaned away to look up at her. “I’m pretty sure Director Smith doesn’t even know who I am. No sense going that high up the chain of command.”

“Nonsense. Of course he knows who you are,” she said with confidence. He wondered if the two of them ever spoke socially and wasn’t sure he wanted the answer. “You’ll be no good to anyone, least of all yourself, trying to operate on so little sleep. Tell your boss your pregnant wife is having a bad day and needs you at home if you must, but you’re staying here to rest. No arguments.”

“Have I ever told you you’re sexy as hell when you get authoritative like that?” he asked, grinning.

She raised an eyebrow and smirked. “You may have mentioned it once or twice.”

“Too bad I’m too tired to do anything about it right now.”

One of Peggy’s hands dropped to the swell of her belly and her eyes got tense in the corners the way they did when the baby was being particularly rude in its movements.

“I’m not in much better shape for it myself at the moment,” Peggy said tightly. “Raincheck?”

Daniel smiled up at her. “Sure thing.”

“Why don’t you go back to bed?” Peggy asked, smoothing the hand that wasn’t on her stomach over his shoulder.

“I can’t. The sun’s up, which means Jackie will wake up any-”

“Mum! Mum! Mummy! Daaad! Muuuum! Mummy!”

The two of them looked at each other and sighed. Daniel couldn’t help smirking slightly at Peggy’s resigned look.

“If I didn’t know better I’d think the two of you planned it this way,” she said.

Daniel wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her belly. “I’ll grab the kid if you go start breakfast,” he offered.

Peggy rolled her eyes and slipped out of his grasp. “I am still capable of picking up my own child, you know.”

“Peg, the doctor said-”

“He’s not that heavy,” she insisted from the door. “Besides, I like your eggs better anyway.”

Daniel huffed out a laugh, too tired to argue about it any further. He hauled himself out of his office chair and crutched out to the kitchen to do as his wife said.

 

**June 1952**

Lala liked the clack of typewriter keys.

It turned out to be a blessing anytime Peggy was out of town.

Their daughter had an obstinate insistence that someone absolutely had to be in the room with her when she was sleeping, and would raise holy hell if she woke up to discover herself alone. At eight months old she was still small enough to fit in the crib Daniel and Peggy had jammed into their bedroom, so it usually wasn’t that big of an issue at night as long as Peggy was home, the damage the situation had done to their sex life notwithstanding. But the first time Peggy went off on a mission somewhere out of the country, Daniel’s insomnia quite cruelly decided to return the day after she left, and he panicked.

He’d grown accustomed to working on the manuscript for his book when he couldn’t sleep, the adventures of Anna Andrews a balm for his exhausted mind and body. Anna was Peggy, of course, with a little bit of her friend Angie’s sass and Rose’s polite no nonsense mannerisms thrown in to make her her own person. But for the first few nights after Peggy left, he couldn’t see how to work on the book without risking Lala throwing a fit and waking her big brother.

Jackie adored Lala. In fact, he was the one to give her her nickname when he refused to call her Angela or even Angie after they brought her home. But no matter how much the two year old loved his sister, he would be impossible the rest of the day if Daniel allowed her crying to wake him up. Especially after he fought bedtime for so long with his insistence that the sun still being in the sky meant that it was morning wake up time, not bed time.

Daniel loved his children, but sometimes when their combined personalities conspired to undermine his best efforts to both raise them properly and keep his sanity he wanted to bash his head against a wall.

So, on the third night Peggy was gone he preempted his insomnia and put the baby down to sleep in the wooden playpen he’d dragged into the corner of his office. She looked like an animal in a zoo, and the contraption blocked the door leading directly into the house, but hopefully Jackie could sleep in peace while Daniel got some much-needed fiction therapy. His only concern was the noise of the typewriter keeping Lala up.

It turned out he shouldn’t have worried. The moment he started typing, Lala’s quiet coos silenced. When he turned around to look she was sitting up watching him with big eyes. He typed a few more lines and she burbled happily at him, clapping her chubby hands together.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping, you know,” he said to her.

She blew a spit bubble at him, a trick Peggy had been less than pleased that Jackie taught her.

“Yeah, I know. I’m a big hypocrite. I just want to get this next big scene out of the way and then we’ll go up to bed. And you better be asleep by the time we do, young lady, or I’m gonna tell Ana you get no applesauce tomorrow.”

She blew another spit bubble at him and Daniel rolled his eyes. Not even a year old yet and she was already sassing him. She was so much like her mother.

 

**August 1953**

“You should publish it, Mr. Sousa!” Ana said earnestly as they sat around the cleared dining room table after one of their regular Thursday night dinners together, playing cards forgotten in front of them. The kids were in bed and Peggy was being liberal with the wine the Jarvises brought.

“I must say, I agree,” Jarvis said. “It is packed with adventure, intrigue, and danger in good supply and would certainly give that 'Casino Royale' book a run for its money.”

“Since when do you know anything about 'Casino Royale'?” Peggy asked.

“Since when do you?” Daniel asked her. She rarely read fiction and often teased him about his own collection.

Peggy shushed him with a flirtatious finger to his lips and pointedly turned her attention back to Jarvis, making Ana laugh. Apparently she’d been more liberal with the wine than even he knew, which was odd because she rarely drank it, preferring harder liquors instead.

“I have become quite the aficionado of spy novels in the past few years, Mrs. Sousa, and I can honestly say that none of them runs quite so true to my experiences with you,” Jarvis said, unflappable as ever.

“That’s because those cases are what it’s based on,” Daniel said.

“True,” Peggy said, “but you’ve changed enough details I doubt anyone not already familiar with them would be able to draw parallels to any specific case.” If only because most of those case files were missing key information in the first place. He changed a lot in the book, but it was still based off true events.

“Besides,” she continued “I rather like the protagonist.”

Peggy’s hand rubbed over the inside of his thigh. Daniel caught it, laying his hand over hers, and twined their fingers together. He thought he caught a hint of a pout on her face.

“Yes! A spy novel with a female lead,” Ana said, her eyes sparkling. “And one with a version of my name, at that.”

“You don’t mind, do you?” Daniel asked. He’d always been a little nervous about her reaction should she ever find out.

“Of course not!” Ana exclaimed. “I am honored to give my name to a character with so many of Mrs. Sousa’s talents.”

“And I couldn’t be happier she has your name,” Peggy said, smiling at her.

“Have you looked into publishers yet, Mr. Sousa?” Jarvis asked.

“It really wasn’t ever meant to be shared,” Daniel said. The Jarvises had only read it because Peggy insisted on sharing it with them after he asked her to look it over the week before. “I mostly wrote it to shut my mind up when I couldn’t sleep. I doubt a publisher would touch it even if I did want it out there. There’s no market for this kind of book.”

“That’s because the publishers have a myopic view of what the market looks like,” Peggy said, sipping from her glass.

“Yes, I do find that many books seem to be variations on the same few themes,” Jarvis said.

“Especially spy novels, I would wager,” Peggy said archly.

“I couldn’t put my name to it,” Daniel said, thinking out loud. “It would draw too much attention to my job, for one thing, not to mention Peggy’s.”

“So you use a nom de plume and set up a separate bank account and mailing address and the like,” Ana said. “Easy.”

Daniel knew it wouldn’t be as easy as all that. Many writers used pen names, he knew, publishing houses had to have strategies already in place to deal with it, but few authors had the security concerns he and Peggy did in their day to day lives, let alone any attention publishing the book might bring him. He had to think of his family’s safety before anything.

“I think it’s a marvelous idea,” Peggy said, cuddling closer into his side and teasing her fingers along his inseam. Had she and Ana been out here drinking while Jarvis and Jackie helped him finish dinner? She could usually hold her liquor better than this, especially in front of her friends. He was just glad any blushing he might be doing could be played off as coyness about his book. “It’ll be fun,” she said, “like having a double life without any real danger.”

“Because neither of us lead double lives already.”

He released her hand and snaked his own under the hem of her skirt to massage her thigh in retaliation for her continuing handsyness. She smiled knowingly. Maybe it wasn’t the wine after all.

“I say you publish,” Jarvis said.

“We are all agreed then,” Ana said. “You will look for a publisher.”

“This isn’t a democracy,” Daniel protested.

“You’re using our likenesses and character traits in your book, so of course it is,” Peggy said. “And we say you publish.”

“Peggy-”

“You’ve worked hard on it, Daniel,” she said seriously. “I’m proud of you. You deserve to see it in print.”

“Here, here!” the Jarvises chorused.

Peggy’s hand drifted back over his lap to cup him through his trousers and he conceded the fight, if only to get their guests out of the house and Peggy up to their bedroom.

 

**May 1957**

At exactly 7:27 pm, Jack’s tin Captain America shield ricocheted off the doorway to Daniel’s office, off the crown molding on the other side of the entryway, and crashed into the hall table to the left of the front door, demolishing the vase of flowers Peggy had set there just that morning. The flowers Jack and Angela gave her for Mother’s Day.

Daniel knew it was at 7:27 pm exactly because he had just looked at the clock on his desk to see if it was time to coerce Lala up to bed yet when the magnificent banging and crashing sounded outside his door.

By the time Daniel emerged from his office to see what the noise was, his seven year old was frozen in place, mouth agape, as he stared at the dripping mess he created.

“Muuum! Jack broke your vase!” Lala yelled.

Daniel quickly walked across the hall to the living room where Lala was standing on the couch. “Angela Colleen Sousa, you do not tattle on your brother,” he snapped at her. “And get off the couch. You know better than to stand on the furniture.”

Lala’s bottom lip trembled as she moved to do as he said. Daniel turned on Jack. “And you. What the hell were you doing throwing that thing in the house? What were you doing throwing it in the first place?”

“We were playing Captain America. Like on TV,” he murmured, still staring at the mess by the door.

Daniel pinched the top of his nose and did his best to calm himself before he started yelling. They were just kids, and yelling wouldn’t help anything. It never did.

Peggy came down the stairs in her bathrobe then, practically carrying a cloud of steam behind her, her hair up in a towel like a misshapen turban. “What in the bloody blue blazes is going on down here?”

“Jack decided to make his Captain America game a little more authentic,” Daniel said. “Apparently your Mother’s Day present was a Hydra agent he needed to take out.”

Jack’s bottom lip was trembling now. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Peggy looked at the mess dripping off the hall table and sighed. “Jack.”

“I’m sorry! I swear I didn’t do it on purpose!”

“You don’t throw things in the house. This is why. You’re lucky you didn’t hit anybody,” Daniel said.

Peggy walked over to the mess, careful of the shrapnel of porcelain on the floor, and picked up the shield. It was dented on two sides and the paint was already flaking off. He’d only had it since Christmas.

“You’re not getting this back,” she said calmly. “Captain America was never so irresponsible with his, which makes me think you don’t deserve it. Not yet, anyway.”

“But Mum-”

“But nothing,” Daniel snapped. “Now go to bed. Both of you.”

“But the sun’s still up,” Jack protested.

“I didn’t do anything!” Lala cried.

“You heard your father,” Peggy said more sharply than before.

“But, Mum-”

Peggy planted her feet and pointed up the stairs. “To bed. Both of you, now.” With the shield held in her right hand and her face as stern as it ever got with the kids she looked like a ridiculous breed of bathtime superhero. Daniel wished he had his camera handy.

The kids trudged upstairs, Jack with his head lowered meekly and Lala with a rebellious pout on her face. When they got upstairs, one of them slammed a door. Daniel closed his eyes and pinched his nose again. Even money the door slammer was Lala. How on earth was that child only five?

Peggy brushed past him and flopped down on the couch, heedless of the way her robe was starting to loosen.

“Well, that was a relaxing end to the day,” she said.

Daniel huffed out a laugh and moved to sit beside her, sliding his crutch along the floor once he was sitting to lay it parallel to the couch.

“Where were you when all this was going on?” she asked.

“Working on final edits for my next book. The kids were happily entertaining themselves and not squabbling for once, so I figured I could get some work in.”

“Already? You only just published the last one. It took you years to finish it after you published ‘Blackout’.”

“I got in a groove?” Daniel said, not meaning to turn it into a question and flinching internally when he realized he had.

Peggy raised an eyebrow at him.

Daniel put a hand behind his neck. “I kinda already had the next few books laid out when you convinced me to publish. It’s pretty much just been a matter of ironing out the details and finding time to write it down.”

Peggy turned to him and gave him a Look. “If I recall correctly, you protested being published quite vigorously for someone who already had the next few books all planned out.”

Daniel gave her a sheepish grin. “Yeah, well, publishing a book is scary.”

“Scary?” Peggy exclaimed, sitting up. “You’ve fought Nazis, almost got sucked into another dimension, dealt with Samberly on a daily basis for three years without becoming a murderer, and married me, but getting a book published is scary?”

“I love that you included marrying you in that list,” he laughed.

“Oh, shut up. What’s so scary about publishing a book anyway? They don’t even have your real name on them.”

“Yeah,” Daniel shrugged. “But what if people don’t like them? What if six months after they’re printed I notice a typo that completely changes what I meant to say somewhere and contradicts something important? What if they’re just bad?”

Peggy smiled at him. “They’re not bad, Darling. You wouldn’t have gotten that offer to turn them into a TV show if they were bad.”

“You think I should accept?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You wouldn’t be able to have creative control over the content of a TV show. I’d hate to see them do to Anna Andrews what that abysmal radio play did to Betty Carver.”

Daniel hummed. That was a no, then, which he’d been leaning toward himself. He noticed she still had Jack’s shield in her lap.

“It was impressive how many things he was able to bounce it off of before it stopped moving,” Daniel said, nodding toward it. “I wouldn’t have thought it could do it once, let alone twice.”

Peggy smoothed her hand over the dents in the side of the shield. “He’s ruined it,” she said mournfully. She’d been nearly as excited to get it for Jack as he was to receive it. Daniel still remembered the hopeful twinkle in her eyes when he timidly suggested it as a present for the boy from Santa. Neither of them ever quite knew how to deal with the ghost of Steve Rogers when it came to the two of them, though they both encouraged the kids to admire him.

“He’s kinda ruined our house too,” Daniel said, hoping to bring her back from whatever sad thought she was having.

Peggy blinked and looked up at him. “I didn’t even look. Is the damage that bad?”

“We’ll have to get someone in here to put up new crown molding. And I have no idea what to do about my door.”

Peggy sighed and leaned back on the sofa. “Brilliant. That’s just what I needed. More things to coordinate this week.”

Daniel put a hand on her knee and massaged it a couple of times. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. One of the guys at work just had his house redone and won’t shut up about it. I’ll ask him who he used.”

She looked at him doe-eyed and his heart gave a happy beat.

“I love you,” she said.

He kissed her chastely, mindful that the kids may have been banished to their rooms, but that didn’t mean they were actually asleep.

“I love you too.” He stole the shield from her. “And I think I know just where to put this so Jack doesn’t get any ideas about throwing it again.”

He collected his crutch and walked across the hall to Peggy’s office, where he dragged a step stool that doubled as a chair over to a particular set of high shelves directly across from the door leading into his office.

“What are you doing? You’ll break your neck,” Peggy said, taking the shield back and blocking his access to the stool. Daniel glowered at her a moment before shrugging it off. He had long ago learned to pick his battles.

“I thought it could live up there,” he said, nodding to the highest shelf which was currently home to an ugly figurine of some sort of creature someone had given them as a wedding present. He didn’t know why they even still had it.

Peggy hummed thoughtfully and ascended the steps on the stool herself, deftly changing out the horrible knick knack for the shield and shifting something else he couldn’t see. He didn’t pry into whatever it was, because, knowing Peggy, it would just lead to a whole mess of problems he didn’t want to deal with at the moment. When she was done, they both stood back to look at the new display and smiled. It was definitely an improvement over the creature.

The shield looked battle-hardened and playful at the same time. Peggy turned and entered his office, coming back a moment later with his copies of “Blackout” and “Bad Babies”, and arranging them next to the shield on the shelf.

“There,” she said when she got back down. “Now all the boys I love are on that shelf any time I need reminding of them.”

Daniel’s heart swelled. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her breathless, knocking the towel off her head in the process. If the kids disobeyed orders and walked in on them they’d just have to live with whatever they saw.

“Darling,” Peggy breathed as he began to kiss down her neck, “we still have to clean up up the flowers. They’ll ruin the floor if we leave them there any longer, not to mention the table.”

Daniel leaned his forehead on her shoulder and groaned. He should’ve had the kids do it.

 

**August 1964**

Peggy smacked a confidential file onto Daniel’s desk and stood back with her hands on her hips.

“You knew,” she said.

Daniel sighed. He had a feeling he knew what was in the folder. It certainly explained the tense mood Peggy had been in all night as they got the kids through their evening routines and up to their rooms to do whatever teenagers did these days. He slid the file over to himself and glanced at the first page inside; it looked like exactly the kind of cock up he’d feared the president was covering for when he addressed the public on tv last night. Added to everything else he knew, it almost looked intentional.

He flipped the file shut and leaned back in his chair before he looked at her.

“I didn’t actually. My clearance doesn’t go that high.”

“Bollocks.”

“Peggy, I swear, I didn’t leak government secrets in my last book. How could I? They hadn’t even happened yet.”

“But you knew. You have access to enough information and a keen enough mind to draw the right conclusions and you knew.”

“I suspected. If not this then something similar was bound to happen eventually. Everybody’s keyed up about the wrong damn things and it’s getting people killed.”

Peggy looked stunned for a moment before her face sharpened with realization.

“You were angry about Kohler. The situation in China. That’s what ‘Midnight Massacre’ was about.”

“You’re damn right I was angry about Kohler. I still am. He died because the idiots in charge didn’t bother to listen when he told them what the situation was on the ground.”

Peggy’s face turned icy. “As one of the ‘idiots in charge’, I can tell you we damn well know what the situation is on the ground.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Do I?”

“The president isn’t listening to sense! You’ve said it yourself I don’t even know how many times in the past month alone. Some of the intelligence coming across my desk is enough to make me sick to my stomach, and I’m not even seeing everything. There’s an agenda at work that isn’t doing what it claims to be doing.”

“So you wrote a detailed description of what might happen if this country continues on its current course, coming damn close to revealing actual military strategy. That’s skating the line of treasonous, Daniel,” Peggy said, a soft, dangerous tone in her voice.

“It’s the truth. You gonna turn me in?”

She stared at him silently. He met her gaze unflinching, but his heart was pounding in his chest.

“No,” she said. Her shoulders dropped as she leaned against the side of his desk. “I won’t turn you in for stating the obvious.” She tapped her fingers against his desk, pausing thoughtfully before she spoke again. “I wouldn’t turn you in even if you had leaked it.”

Daniel shrugged his shoulders, suddenly exhausted. “My books don’t sell well enough that it would make a difference anyway. Not that I ever would. There’s more than just national security at risk.”

Peggy smiled at him, a faint ghost of a thing, and the fine lines around her eyes relaxed for a moment. “I know you wouldn’t. You’d never do anything that might jeopardize the kids’ safety.”

“But you are angry about this,” he said, flicking a finger at the file on his desk.

“Of course I’m angry,” she said, nostrils flaring. “I’m privy to information about the decisions being made that almost make me want to leak it myself. I’ve been trying to talk to Johnson for ages to get us out of there, but his boys’ club won’t let him listen to me. It’s more important to ‘contain China’ than it is to hear anything I might have to say on the matter.”

Daniel knew the sexism she still encountered in the workplace rankled her even more now that she was the head of one of the most elite spy agencies in the world. Johnson absolutely should be listening to her, more than he listened to the rest of his advisors given her experience. It pained him that the man wasn’t, especially after her advice to Kennedy was half the reason they avoided nuclear war almost two years ago.

She looked down at the floor, glaring at it. “And I think you’re right that there’s more going on. There’s always more going on.”

“They’re warmongering,” he said. It was obvious with half the information he had access to at work.

“They are,” she agreed. “Among other things.”

He sighed, hating to have his fears confirmed.

Peggy was still tense and ill at ease. There was something else, something that worried her more than the possibility that he was using Anna Andrews to leak government secrets, more than what the president and his men were getting up to. She wasn’t rushing to come up with a plan or asking his advice for another diplomatic tack to take. Something else was wrong.

“Peggy, what’s really bothering you about this? You make life and death decisions every day. What makes this so different?”

“Jack,” Peggy said, tears starting to swell in her voice. Daniel closed his eyes, the sick, fearful anger that boiled in his gut whenever he thought about it rising in him again. The thought of it was one of the main things that kept him up at night lately. Had kept him up at night for months when he was writing “Midnight Massacre”. Rather than give in to it he held his hands out to Peggy and pulled her into his lap, knowing they both needed the comfort of each other now, the pain in his leg from her weight be damned.

“If it was something worthwhile, something honorable I might almost be all right risking him to it,” Peggy said quietly. “But this won’t be like our war. It will be a pointless slaughter that could well rip this country apart, all for the sake of some old man’s misplaced sense of pride and history. For a sodding election. And if it doesn’t, I’m not sure how keen I am to go on protecting it as I have been.”

They were bold words, especially coming from Peggy who had built her entire life around protecting America and the world from those that threatened them. But for the sake of their son, he knew she meant every one of them.

“He’s not even 15, Peg. Maybe it’ll blow over by the time he’s old enough.”

“His birthday’s next week.”

“Still.”

“Do you really think it will fizzle out before he’s drafted?” Peggy asked, her mother’s fear making her look more helpless than he’d ever seen her before. She wasn’t the director of SHIELD asking an analyst a question, she was his wife, his son’s mother, begging him to give her hope.

“Yeah,” he lied. “And if not we’ll send him to college. Force him to get a couple PhDs in astrophysics or something to avoid the draft.”

Peggy choked out a laugh and buried her face in his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her tighter and tried to hold back the fearful tears of his own.

Their Jackie would be all right. He had to be.

 

**June 1967**

The kids tumbled through the back door in high spirits, Peggy and Daniel following slightly more sedately behind them. Daniel soaked up their laughter, knowing that in a few short weeks Jack would be off to Northwestern for his undergrad and the dynamic of their family would change forever.

“That was terrible!” Angela cackled for at least the sixth time since they left the theater.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Jack protested, unable to stop grinning in the face of her hilarity. “It just wasn’t that good either.”

“Oh, like you didn’t like looking at all those Japanese girls in bikinis,” she teased. “‘In Japan, men come before women, Bond-san. Allow me to demonstrate by having five women in bikinis that look like underwear bathe you, Bond-san. You can sleep with whichever one you like.’” Jack went red and pointedly avoided eye contact with Daniel and Peggy, who failed to smother their own grins as they followed the kids into the living room.

“Did he sleep with five or six different women over the course of the movie?” Daniel asked as he sat down on the couch, tucking his crutch out of the way. “I lost count.”

“I think it was only four,” Jack said. “Though why he slept with that redheaded chick, I don’t know.”

“Is that how we talk about women in this house?” Peggy scolded lightly.

“Sorry, Mum.”

“I still can’t get over the ketchup and mustard henchmen,” Angela said from where she was sprawled over one of the armchairs. “What genius thought that was a good idea?”

They all snickered and Peggy and Daniel grinned at each other. Henchmen rarely wore matching uniforms in their experience.

“I don’t know,” Daniel said. “I kind of liked the part with the volcano lair. Very realistic.” Peggy elbowed him in the side. “Or the part where they picked up couches to try to fight each other. Brawling at its best.”

Peggy rolled her eyes. “Amateurs. Who wastes energy picking up furniture to fight with?”

“Better a stapler to the face, huh, Peg?” Daniel teased. The kids’ mouths dropped open.

“That was one time. Besides, had he not come in the room I’d have been in and gone without any fuss at all.”

The phone rang in the kitchen and Angela rushed to pick it up. She had cancelled a date earlier that night to go to the movies with them and no doubt hoped to talk with whatever boy she was intent on seeing. If asked, Daniel would flatly deny being proud of how he guilted her into family time instead.

She walked back into the living room a moment later with a serious look on her face.

“Mum, it’s work.”

“Why on earth didn’t they call the secure line in my office then?”

“It’s Howard Stark. He sounded worried about something. And kind of distracted.”

Peggy and Daniel exchanged a look. There were any number of reasons why Howard Stark would call Peggy at home, and none of them were anything either of them wanted to have to deal with at 9:30 on a Friday night.

“Tell him I’ll call him back directly and hang up the phone,” Peggy said in her director voice. “Is he at SHIELD?” Angela nodded. Peggy stood and walked across the hall to her office without another word.

Angela grimaced. Daniel knew she hated it when Peggy spoke to her that way.

“Go deal with Stark, then come back here. We’ll try to catch the rest of _Get Smart_ or something,” Daniel said.

Angela went back into the kitchen and Jack caught his eye.

“Won’t you have to go into work too?” he asked.

“Not necessarily,” Daniel said, his eye on Peggy’s closed office door. “It depends on whatever it is. We rarely work on the same things anymore.”

“But you’re both spies.”

“That doesn’t mean we work on the same things. Your mother has her secrets and I have mine and they don’t overlap as much as you’d think. It comes of working for different agencies.”

He and Peggy had begun telling the kids more about their work over the past couple of years, hoping to prepare them for the way the world was changing faster every day. They never said anything specific, but if Jack expressed concern about nuclear armament or Angela had a question about international politics, neither he nor Peggy would pretend to know less than they did anymore.

Surprisingly, neither of the kids asked many specific questions, and both of them clearly thought hard about what they did ask before they even opened their mouths. Jack especially seemed to grasp just how dangerous asking the wrong question in the wrong place and around the wrong people could be.

Angela came back into the room and curled up next to Daniel on the couch. He put his arm around her and smiled.

“You’d think the world was ending, looking at you two.”

“It might be,” Angela said. Jack was stone-faced, but Daniel could see the worry in his eyes.

“It’s not,” Daniel said. “I’ve lived through world ending and it doesn’t look like this.”

“Will Mum have to go on another mission?” Angela asked.

“I don’t know,” Daniel said.

“We can handle things here if you both have to go,” Jack said, his face serious. Daniel could see him trying to put on the adult hat he and Peggy tried so hard to protect him from all these years. He had no reason to grow up faster than he had to, unlike so many kids in Daniel’s generation, himself included. But then, Jack was almost 18. He was growing up whether they liked it or not.

“I won’t have to,” Daniel said, certain that anything Stark was worried about wouldn’t fall under the auspices of the CIA anyway. “I’m glad to know you could handle things if I did, though. You’re good kids.”

“Do you think it has to do with the war?” Angela asked, glancing at Jack.

“Which one?” Daniel muttered. The kids stiffened and he realized he said that loud enough that they could hear him. He cursed himself and turned so he could look at them both fully.

“I’m sure whatever’s going on will be fine. This is your mother we’re talking about; she’s capable of anything. She can handle it.”

Peggy’s door opened then and they all turned to look at her. She looked both annoyed and tired, which didn’t tell Daniel much as that was often how she looked after speaking to Stark.

“China has the H-bomb,” she announced. Daniel closed his eyes and sighed.

“Score another one for death by mushroom cloud,” Jack muttered. His disapproval of nuclear weapons rivaled Peggy’s, though perhaps only because he could actually show his face at nuclear disarmament protests and she couldn’t.

“It’s not going to come to that because actually using it isn’t their intention at the moment. They simply want the rest of the world to know that using it is an option for them now,” Peggy said. “It’s high stakes posturing, nothing more.”

“Should you be telling us this?” Jack asked, his brow wrinkled.

Peggy shrugged her shoulders. “It will be in the news by Monday, if not sooner. Keeping it from you would serve no purpose, and telling you will hopefully put your minds at ease that I won’t be away for half the summer working on something top secret.”

Daniel smiled at how well she knew their kids.

“Just don’t go blabbing it to your friends before it comes out,” he cautioned. “We don’t need anyone wondering why the kids of a low-placed government clerk and an office manager know such things before anyone else.”

Jack and Angela looked at him like he was an idiot for saying that, and he again felt relieved that his and Peggy’s faith in their discretion was not misplaced. They really were good kids.

“So,” Peggy said “now that that’s done with, is there still anything remotely worth watching on the telly, or should we go back to discussing how atrocious the movie was?”

Daniel felt Angela’s shoulders relax under his arm and Jack’s mouth twitched into a small grin.

“I really did like the parts with the cannibal spaceship,” Daniel said, smirking. “Great special effects. I should put something like that into my next book.”

Angela groaned and Jack lobbed a pillow at his face.

 

**July 1973**

Daniel lay awake in bed staring at the ceiling. He saw nothing. He wished he could feel nothing, think nothing.

Jack. His Jackie.

Impotent tears streaked down the sides of his face, but he didn’t bother trying to brush them away. He was beyond that now.

Peggy lay beside him having finally passed out from exhaustion. Her face was puffy and her mouth was turned down in an unhappy pout. Stark had dragged her home that afternoon and told Daniel to do whatever he had to to keep her out of the office for the rest of the week at least, she was terrorizing the agents. It was the first time the man had ever stepped foot inside their house and he looked as wilted and out of place there as Daniel had ever seen him.

But then, he had a son of his own now.

Daniel choked on a sob and tried to remember how to breathe.

In the end, it hadn’t mattered that Daniel and Peggy protected him from the war. Jack went and got himself killed trying to protect some woman and her baby from a mugger.

A mugger.

Jackie, obsessed with being a hero, had died trying to be one for someone he didn’t even know. It was something Daniel and Peggy wouldn’t have hesitated doing, but they were trained, had real world experience in fighting with weapons and without. Jackie was still practically a kid. A foolish, starry-eyed kid whose experience in physical confrontations was limited to a single fist fight he got into and lost in middle school.

Daniel couldn’t stop thinking that he was partly to blame for teaching him that heroes were something real, something possible. He had let the kids read scenes from his Anna Andrews books once they were old enough. They were both fascinated, but Jackie was obsessed with her for years, longer than he was obsessed with Captain America. It frustrated the hell out of him when he was younger that he wasn’t allowed to brag that his dad wrote the books.

He looked up to Daniel. He came to him for advice about his future, for comfort when he was heartsick. Jack was studying to become a doctor because of Daniel. He said he wanted to help people, maybe figure out better surgeries or better prosthetics so people like Daniel could have a better quality of life, better mobility out in the world. There was a whole new generation of soldiers coming home without limbs, after all, and Jackie wanted to be there for them in whatever way he could.

He was such a dreamer, so optimistic about the future and how he could help to make it better.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. Not Jackie.

It was no use going into Jack’s room, staring at his old band posters and the things he left behind when he went off to college. Daniel did that when he first got the news, and it had only made the aching denial in his chest worse. The baby he’d held in his arms, the child he’d scolded and comforted, the man he’d been proud to claim as his son was dead, gone.

His baby boy was gone and there was nothing Daniel or Peggy could do about it.

Senseless, stupid…

Daniel stared at the ceiling until dawn, and then rose with robotic thoughtlessness to put on his leg and his funeral suit.

It was going to be the longest day of his life.

 

**May 1974**

Daniel sat at his desk and stared at the file cabinet he kept Anna Andrews in when he wasn’t working to expand her world. He hadn’t opened it in almost a year, and wasn’t sure he wanted to now, but Peggy had slapped a large pile of mail on the dining room table when she got home that night, all of it addressed to D.S. Carver.

He didn’t know when she made a copy of the key to the PO Box he kept in New York as the official mailing address of his pen name - she might not even have bothered to do that much, simply taken the key from his desk and used it - but he didn’t really care. He hadn’t gone to pick up mail from it since a week after they buried Jackie. There hadn’t seemed to be any point. There still didn’t seem to be much point. But his publishers were getting nervous he’d died without wrapping up the cliffhanger he ended his last book on and he needed to decide if D.S. Carver was dead or not. The twentieth anniversary of “Blackout” was coming up later in the year and they wanted to know how to promote it.

He wasn’t sure he cared.

He still had sleepless nights, but lately he spent them in front of the TV, staring unseeing at whatever happened to be on. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to write anymore.

Sighing, Daniel got up and opened the top drawer of his cabinet, but startled when his neatly organized files weren’t there. In their place was a single piece of paper.

He picked it up and turned it over. It struck him like a physical blow, and he stumbled back into his chair.

“Mum said you haven’t been writing.”

Daniel jerked and looked toward the door leading into the house. Angela stood there in an obscene halter top and wide legged trousers looking like Peggy on vacation thirty years earlier, if straightened hair and blue eyeshadow had been in fashion then.

“Lala, what are you doing here?”

She smiled. “Nobody calls me that anymore.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It reminds me of Jack. I used to think he’d be calling me that until we were in a nursing home together and all the other old people would think we were senile because of how stupid a name it is.”

Daniel managed a half smile. “You always did hate that nickname.”

“Only you and Jack could get away with it.”

Daniel looked at his daughter. He hadn’t seen her in months, though that was more his fault than hers. She was sunkissed brown all over and a little too skinny for his tastes, making her nose - his nose, Peggy had cooed at him when she was still a baby - stand out on her face. He wondered if she was eating enough.

“What are you doing here?” he asked again. “Shouldn’t you be cramming for finals or off having goodbye parties with ridiculous amounts of alcohol and drugs?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t do drugs, I’m not stupid. You and Mum would kill me if I tried. You’d just _know_ somehow.” He smiled to himself while she glared at him. “And I told you, Mum said you haven’t been writing.”

He raised an eyebrow, waiting to see if she’d actually follow that last sentence up with anything. She huffed out a sigh and rolled her eyes again.

“You were always writing when I was growing up. Always clacking away on that ancient typewriter of yours. It’s not right that you’ve stopped.”

“Lala-”

“I get it. It fucking sucks that Jack’s dead. I flunked two classes the semester after he died cause I just couldn’t concentrate on the work.”

“You-”

“Don’t look at me like that. Mum talked to my professors and they let it slide. But that’s why I won’t graduate with honors next week. And why I don’t really care that I won’t. It’s not like it matters anyway.”

He’d wondered about it when she told them on the phone, but a few sharp words from Peggy shut him up and he’d dropped it. Maybe he should have asked anyway. He definitely should have asked anyway.

Daniel closed his eyes. Peggy had known their daughter was struggling and didn’t tell him. Or maybe she did and he just wasn’t paying attention. He really had checked out of his life for the past year.

“Dad, Jack loved Anna Andrews. She was his first crush until I told him you based her off Mum and he creeped himself out.” Daniel choked out a laugh. He remembered that fight. “He wouldn’t want you to quit writing about her because of him.”

Daniel looked at the paper in his hand and nodded. It was a picture of Anna Andrews Jackie drew when he was five based off the cover of “Blackout”. Peggy had framed it and set it on her desk at home for years until he begged her to get rid of it when he was thirteen. Clearly she hadn’t gotten rid of it completely.

He looked back up at Angela and blinked back tears. She was just as beautiful and smart and driven as her mother. And just as unlikely to put up with his shit. He was so glad she was home.

“You staying the night?” he asked.

“If you’re making breakfast.”

He nodded and she turned to go.

“Hey, where are my notes?” he asked. “I can’t write anything if I can’t remember where I left off.”

Angela beamed at him.

They’d be okay. He’d be okay. Anna Andrews still had butts to kick and names to take, and he couldn’t have her stop now.

For Angela's sake. For Jackie's. He wouldn't let them down.

**Author's Note:**

> So, is your heart bleeding on the floor yet? I'm a little appalled at myself for how easy it was to kill off Jack once I figured out that's what was going to happen. Sorry about that.
> 
> And now, some history:
> 
> The Gulf of Tonkin incident: Originally, the US government claimed that two skirmishes in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam in August 1964 were instigated by the North Vietnamese. In response, Congress passed a resolution granting President Johnson authority to "assist" SE Asian countries threatened by communism, giving legal justification for sending in troops and waging open war. Basically, this incident is what turned the Vietnam War into what we all know it as today. Infuriatingly, it was unclear even to those making the decisions at the time whether one or even both of the skirmishes were real or the result of "Tonkin ghosts" (false radar images), and many people later came to believe the incident was part of a covert plan to purposely increase hostilities. Privately, Johnson said, "For all I know, our navy was shooting at whales out there." A great pretense for bloodshed. 
> 
> John White's Letter to the New Haven Register: http://www.connecticutmag.com/Connecticut-Magazine/August-2014/50-Years-After-the-Golf-of-Tonkin-Vietnam-Vet-John-White-Looks-Back-at-the-Incident-that-Sparked-War/John-Whites-Letter-to-the-New-Haven-Register-1967/
> 
> Walter Bedell "Beetle" Smith: General Eisenhower's Chief of Staff during WWII, he later became the Director of Central Intelligence at the CIA from 1950-1953. Not only would that make him Daniel's boss, but his roll as director also had him coordinating activities between the various US intelligence agencies, meaning he probably spent a fair amount of time talking to Peggy, thus her familiar use of his nickname.
> 
> "Casino Royale": The first James Bond novel, published in April 1953. It was an instant hit in the UK, but sold less well in the US.
> 
> Kohler: An invention of mine very (very) loosely based off of Albert Peter Dewey, an OSS officer killed in September 1945 by Viet Minh soldiers who claimed they thought he was French (Vietnam and France were not on good terms at that point, to say the least). I headcanon Kohler as being a colleague of Daniel's who was killed after high command ignored intelligence he and others provided and therefore put him in even greater danger than he had to be.
> 
> The situation in China: The US government was highly concerned about the rise of communism in China after WWII, and the influence the country had over the rest of the region. "Containing China" was one of the motivating factors for escalating the conflict in Vietnam. 
> 
> Peggy's advice to Kennedy: This is referring to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, in which the US and the USSR faced off over the US having missiles in Turkey and the USSR having missiles in Cuba - easy access for either country to bomb the other at a moment's notice. It was a tense couple of weeks and resulted in the Moscow-Washington hotline (or "red telephone"), a direct phone link between the two to be used to avert just such a crisis in the future.
> 
> The draft: From 1940-1973, all men ages 18-26 were required to register for potential conscription to fill military vacancies. One of the ways you could have your conscription deferred if your number came up was by being a student, thus Daniel's joke about forcing Jack to get a couple of PhDs. I fully believe that, knowing what they knew in their line of work, Peggy and Daniel wouldn't want Jack anywhere near the military at that point.
> 
> Northwestern University: I sent Jack there because they have a prosthetics and orthotics center with a history going back to WWII. Doing his premed there would be a foot in the door to studying in his desired field with hands on experience and mentorship by experts doing what he wants to do. 
> 
> _You Only Live Twice_ : Yes, I had the Sousa family go to see a James Bond film solely to give them an opportunity to mock it. And boy, did I come up with a list of things for them to mock when I watched it.
> 
>  _Get Smart_ : A TV show that satirized the secret agent genre. If the Sousas watch James Bond to make fun of it, I figured they might watch this over the more serious _The Man From U.N.C.L.E._ or _T.H.E. Cat_ which actually aired on Friday nights, not Saturday nights, when _Get Smart_ aired.
> 
> China and the H-bomb: China already had a nuclear bomb with fission technology (like the bombs dropped on Japan), but on June 17, 1967 they successfully tested a more dangerous fusion bomb. They went from fission to fusion faster than any other known nuclear development in history.


End file.
